Dora Schwebel

2009 Baking Hall of Fame
I
t is thanks to the hard work
and determination of Dora
Schwebel that Schwebel
Baking Co. survived the Great
Depression and continued to
thrive afterward.
Dora and her husband, Joseph, were co-founders of the
company, but he died suddenly
a year before the stock market
crash in 1929 leaving his wife
behind to run the business and
raise six children during the
Great Depression.
Despite the odds, Mrs.
Schwebel managed to keep the
company going through the difficult 1930s and raise the children all at the same time.
“No one expected Dora
Schwebel to hold the company together under such circumstances,” said Alyson Winick, Mrs. Schwebel’s granddaughter. “But this strong woman with clear, penetrating
eyes and a determined jaw — she had strength.”
The couple started the company in 1906 when
Joseph and Dora Schwebel began baking out of their home in
Campbell, Ohio. After the business was up and running they
started out baking about 40
loaves a day and selling doorto-door. However, previously
in 1905 Joseph and a business
partner had gone broke in their
efforts to start the business, so
the Schwebels borrowed $300
from Dora’s brother and started
again. After that initial experience, Mrs. Schwebel reportedly
told her husband not to have
any other business partners.
Ms. Winick said her grandmother delivered bread in
wicker laundry baskets by bicycle to other immigrants in
the area. She said quality, personal service and sameday freshness were seen as values identified early on in
company history.
In 1914, the company began delivering bread to “mom
and pop” stores by horse and buggy, and by 1923 with
an investment of $25,000 they opened a small bakery
that made 1,000 loaves of bread a day and had six delivery trucks. Then in 1928 tragedy struck when Joseph
Dora Schwebel
Dora Schwebel, left, with Eleanor Roosevelt, seated at the
right.
44 / April 7, 2009
Milling & Baking News
Rudolph Nesnidal, left, with Dora Schwebel and Harry Ostroff,
right. Mr. Nesnidal and Mr. Ostroff were the first two men to
retire from Schwebel Baking Co.
bakingbusiness.com / world-grain.com
MARGO KUCHURIS WISEMAN
2009 Baking Hall of Fame
agreements that helped keep
died suddenly at the age of 46.
the business going. Thanks to
Mrs. Schwebel’s advisers,
such efforts, the company kept
suppliers and closest confidants
going strong throughout the derecommended and even urged
pression. Mrs. Schwebel’s work
her to sell the business. They
helped double sales and protold her it would be nearly imvide food for those in need durpossible for a woman operating
ing this period. In 1932 Happy
alone in the bakery business
the Clown was introduced as a
under such circumstances.
trademark on bread packages
“She wouldn’t hear of it,”
to help brighten people’s spirMs. Winick said. “She pushed
its despite such difficult times.
on. Clearly they had underestiIn 1936 the company moved
mated Dora Schwebel. This was
into a new $100,000 bakery, and
no ordinary woman.”
Mrs. Schwebel’s granddaughter, Alyson Winick,
left, with John Del Campo, a member of the
the facilities were expanded in
Ms. Winick said her grandA.S.B. Hall of Fame Committee.
1938 and 1941.
mother contacted flour mills to
Demand for the company’s
persuade them to offer credit,
products built quite steadily in
and as a personal guarantee
said she would even clean mill floors on her hands and the 1940s after the war ended and the baby boom began.
In 1951, a new facility was built in Youngstown, Ohio,
knees.
“Fortunately that guarantee was never needed,” Ms. for $1 million, and the facility was known as “The Million-Dollar Bakery.” With the opening of the new faciliWinick said.
Mrs. Schwebel was able to negotiate a number of ty, the company also introduced Schwebel’s Toasti-Taste
Since 1922, the North Dakota
Mill has selected and milled the
finest quality wheat to create a superior line of flour known for its
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We continue our tradition of
catering to customers who set
the highest quality standards in
the industry and insist on baking
with the best.
46 / April 7, 2009
Milling & Baking News
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bakingbusiness.com / world-grain.com
www.ndmill.com
Bread in a golden-yellow wrapper.
Preceding these events, in the late
1940s Mrs. Schwebel called together
the family and said she wanted to
expand because the neighboring
mills and their soot made it impossible to keep the bakery clean, and
the company needed to expand
to get away from the dirty mills.
Of the 11 family members in the
room that day, every one but Mrs.
Schwebel were against the expansion. But her one vote ended up carrying all the weight, and expansion
followed.
“The new bakery is for the future,” Mrs. Schwebel was quoted
as saying at the time in 1951. “It is
for my family, to provide for their
security and the security of the boys
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Milling & Baking News
MARGO KUCHURIS WISEMAN
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Alyson Winick, left, accepted the Hall
of Fame plaque on behalf of her grandmother, Dora Schwebel.
out in the plant. For me, I’m an old
woman.”
Mrs. Schwebel even once had the
honor of hosting Eleanor Roosevelt
when she came to visit the company.
“(Dora was) a remarkable woman
who never saw herself as remarkable, neither proud nor ashamed of
her humble beginnings,” Ms. Winick said. “This honor is something
she would not have expected.”
In 1964 she died at the age of 76,
and the company has continued
to expand ever since, growing the
company into the premier wholesale
baking company in the region. MBN
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